HM Land Registry

HMLR business strategy one year on: what has changed?

In the year since it launched its new business strategy, HM Land Registry (HMLR) updates the changes it has already made – and outlines those yet to come.

About the author: Karina Singh is the director of transformation, overseeing all the changes required to deliver the HMLR Business Strategy 2017–22. She is also the senior responsible officer for the Local Land Charges Programme, accountable to parliament for the successful delivery of this complex and ambitious agenda to migrate local land charges services from local authorities to HMLR strategy. Karina has been a civil servant for 28 years, mainly in HM Revenue and Customs and HM Treasury, as well as some time in the private sector. She has led and managed various aspects of change delivery over the last 15 years.

Since 1862, HMLR has underpinned the economic and social stability of England and Wales through safeguarding rights and interests in land and property. A lot has changed in HMLR since then: from our humble beginnings with just six members of staff, we now employ more than 5,000 people across the country in 14 different office locations. And, undoubtedly, the land and property market in which we work has also changed beyond recognition.

Last November, we launched our five-year business strategy.¹ In it, we set out how HMLR intends to transform itself to meet the demands of the modern housing market, making conveyancing simpler, faster and cheaper. As director of transformation at HMLR, I oversee all the incremental and interdependent changes which make up our transformation portfolio. I have now been in post for almost a year, and it seems a timely point to review the steps we have taken over the past 12 months to achieve our transformation ambitions.

What is HMLR trying to achieve?

HMLR is committed to becoming the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data. We are also committed to reaching the challenging target of achieving comprehensive land registration by 2030.

Our innovative programme of transformation will enable HMLR to achieve these goals while staying true to our heritage and protecting the integrity of the register. Our values will continue to underpin everything we do.

How is HMLR doing this?

These aims are ambitious and will not be achieved overnight. But we believe that by exploring the opportunities offered by new technologies, supporting staff to use their casework expertise, and working closely together with customers, we can achieve them.

So, what has changed since HMLR published its business strategy?
Creating one central register for Local Land Charges

HMLR’s Local Land Charges (LLC) programme is vital to the government’s aim of improving the homebuying process. We are working in partnership with local authorities in England to transform and migrate their LLC register information to one accessible place. HMLR’s new, digital LLC register will help provide a simpler, faster way to complete LLC searches. Instead of waiting for up to five working days to get the results, customers can now get the results instantly. This is a transformative and revolutionary upgrade on the system which existed before.

On 11 July, Warwick District Council (DC) became the first local authority to migrate its LLC data to HMLR’s new digital LLC register. Warwick DC was followed by Liverpool City Council on 3 September, and on 8 October the digital LLC register went live for the City of London Corporation.

The impact on conveyancing services in areas where the service is live has been both stark and immediate: the first digital LLC search in Liverpool took seconds rather than days, with the potential for making the process of receiving LLC1 searches practically instantaneous. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, HMLR is planning to roll out the service to up to 26 local authorities.

Making the most of new technologies

This is not the only area where digital advances are changing the way we work. A house in Rotherhithe, in south-east London, made history in April this year, when it became the first property to be remortgaged using a digital mortgage deed. While the HMLR ‘Sign your mortgage deed’ service is still in its infancy, an increasing number of lenders, conveyancers and owners will soon be able to access this quicker - and more secure and convenient - way to remortgage their property. This is a hugely significant milestone on the road to our goal of facilitating the first fully digital transfer of a property.

HMLR is also working on making it easier to develop property. The ‘I want to develop property’ service is designed to simplify the process of building and selling new properties, ensuring easier sharing of data earlier in the development process to give lenders, buyers, and builders alike more clarity over timelines and processes.

Underpinning all of this is Digital Street, the HMLR research and development programme that is experimenting with exciting and creative new ideas and approaches to make conveyancing quicker and easier through the innovative use of technology. This year, the project will focus on potential future uses for blockchain, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts, and while we do not have firm plans for how we use this learning yet, the possibilities are incredibly exciting.

A smoother customer journey

Our transformation work is not restricted to the realms of cutting-edge new technology: it is also ingrained at the very heart of our everyday interactions with our customers and our desire to be ‘Brilliant at the basics’.²

A key area of focus for us is to reduce the number of application enquires, known as requisitions. Our research consistently shows that speed and accuracy of service is important to you. We have a shared responsibility to improve the quality of registration applications, which will reduce the time and expense of reworking them.

With the introduction of more customer-focused training, account manager support and revisions to policy, we will help to ensure that applications are right the first time. HMLR will also release its application quality data, enabling property buyers to make informed choices about conveyancers: making conveyancing simpler, faster and cheaper for everyone.

HMLR has also been investigating areas where we can automate tasks at our end of the conveyancing process: for instance, automating the entry of lease information on a landlord’s title when registering a new lease application. And we have been streamlining our internal processes, introducing slicker processes to help developers of new estates get information from us faster.

We have come a long way in the last year implementing our business strategy, and you can expect to hear more from HMLR on refining our approach to application enquiries in the coming months. As HMLR works to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data, we will continue to engage with our customers and stakeholders, drive innovation across our organisation and the property market, and ensure a simpler, faster and cheaper conveyancing process.

1 Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-landregistry-business-strategy-2017-to-2022

2 See note 1, pages 8–10